Marathon Oil reported a $254 million net profit in the third quarter that swung up from a nearly $600 million loss during the same quarter last year.

The Houston-based oil producer said it was led by higher oil prices and growth in South Texas' Eagle Ford shale. Marathon's net income also more than doubled from the $96 million gain in the second quarter of 2018.

Marathon's revenues jumped by one-third from last year from $1.25 billion up to $1.67 billion.

The company's oil and gas production volumes are up while keeping capital spending levels flat, said Marathon Chief Executive Lee Tillman.

He said the strongest production is in the Eagle Ford and North Dakota's Bakken shale, while also citing the transition to more development drilling in Oklahoma and steady progression in the northern Permian Basin in West Texas and into New Mexico.

Jordan Blum is a senior energy reporter at the Houston Chronicle since 2015. He has extensively covered the industry from the 2014 bust in oil prices to the more recent boom in West Texas’ Permian Basin. He has written about everything from Texas’ national lead in renewable wind power to the Houston area’s growing dominance in petrochemical and plastics manufacturing.

Previously, Jordan was an award-winning reporter at The Advocate in Baton Rouge and New Orleans as a statehouse reporter and education writer, and then as the newspaper’s Washington Bureau chief. Jordan is a New Orleans native who graduated from Texas Christian University with a journalism degree before going back to work at daily newspapers in Louisiana.